In these years, a transaction apparatus such as an automatic transaction apparatus is widely spreading. This automatic transation apparatus is installed in the premises of financial institutions such as a bank for automatic deposits and dispensation of cash depending on the operations controlled by customers.
A paper sheet manipulating apparatus of the related arts realizes a transaction by executing deposits and dispensation of paper sheets under the operations controlled by an operator such as a customer.
This paper sheet manipulating apparatus realizes various transactions in the financial institutions such as receiving a transaction, expensing a transaction and a payment/transfer transaction, etc. by depositing and dispensing paper moneys (bills).
In the case of an expensing transaction, the bills accommodated in the apparatus are transferred, depending on the operator's instruction, to an inlet/outlet port using a roller and a belt for dispensation to a customer.
In the case of an receiving transaction, bills placed in the inlet/outlet port are taken into the apparatus for accommodating bills depending on the instruction which an operator has inputted.
Such an automatic transaction apparatus (bill manipulating apparatus or cash dispensing apparatus) is described in the official gazette of the Japanese patent laid-open No. 62-216098, which was filed for application on Mar. 18, 1986 by the applicant of the present invention and thereafter laid open on Sep. 22, 1987.
Such a bill manipulating apparatus comprises an inlet/outlet port for inputting and outputting bills, a discriminating section for discriminating between a true bill and a false bill and also discriminating denominations, a front and rear surface ordering section for ordering the front and rear surfaces of bills, an accommodating cabinet for accommodating bills, a temporary pooling section for temporarily storing bills, a teller's safe for collecting bills in the accommodation cabinet and charging bills thereto and a reject section for collecting at least the bills among those charged from the teller's safe and are not recognized as the true bills by the discriminating section.
Dispensation of bills is carried out as explained below. First, the bills are fed sheet by sheet by a feeding mechanism from the accommodation cabinet in which necessary denominations are accommodated. These bills are then transferred to the discrimination section for confirming denominations through a route provided with a transfer roller or a transfer belt not illustrated and thereafter are accommodated in the temporary pooling section. This operation is repeated until the bills of the amount designated by a customer are fed from the accommodation cabinet and are then accommodated in the temporary pooling section. When the bills of the predetermined amount designated to be outputted are accommodated in the temporary pooling section, such bills are transferred to the inlet/outlet port one at a time.
Thereafter, a shutter closing the inlet/output port is opened, resulting in the condition that a customer can get the bills. When a customer gets the bills outputted to the inlet/outlet port after the shutter opens, the dispensation transaction is completed.
At the time of a deposit transaction, a customer selects the deposit transaction with the operations not illustrated. Thereafter, when justification of a card inserted by a customer is verified, a deposit of bills is permitted.
In this case, it is also possible that a customer is urged to input a code-number for verifying justification of the customer.
In the case of a deposit transaction, the shutter is first opened resulting in the condition that a customer is capable of inputting bills into the inlet/output port. When the customer inputs the bills to the inlet/outlet port and depresses a button (not illustrated) for indicating that bills are inputted, the shutter closes. Thereafter, the bills placed in the inlet/outlet port are fed sheet by sheet with a feeding roller (not illustrated) and are then transferred to the discriminating section through the route having the transfer roller or transfer belt (not illustrated). The discriminating section discriminates true or false bills, denominations and conditions of bills such as front side or rear side thereof. On the basis of the result of discrimination, the front and rear surface ordering section orders the bills transferred so that the bills transferred are set only in one surface. The bills ordered in one surface are then further transferred and are stored in the temporary pooling section.
This temporary pooling section is provided because the bills inputted and discriminated are sometimes returned to a customer as will be explained later.
Therefore, if the discriminated bills are accommodated in the accommodation cabinet, these bills are mixed with the other bills in the accommodation cabinet. Therefore the discriminated bills must be set in such a condition as may be returned, when required, to the inlet/outlet port before these bills are accommodated in the accommodation cabinet.
However, when the discriminated bills are returned in direct to the inlet/outlet port, if the bills which are not yet fed and discriminated exist, the discriminated bills are mixed with undiscriminated bills, disabling normal manipulation.
Considering such conditions, the temporary pooling section is provided to sequentially store the discriminated bills and to feed the bills to the inlet/outlet port therefrom at the time of returning operation.
Moreover, the temporary pooling section has two bill storing areas to store separately the false bills from the true bills from the time that the false bills are discriminated from the true bills.
When all bills in the inlet/outlet port are completely discriminated, the bills not discriminated as the true bills are transferred to the inlet/outlet port, the shutter is opened and a guidance for instructing getting of bills in the inlet/outlet port is displayed on a display (not illustrated). When the bills are taken over from the inlet/outlet port depending on the guidance and are not inputted again within the predetermined period, the shutter is closed and transaction may be continued only with the bills discriminated as the true bills remaining in the temporary pooling section.
Moreover, when the bills in the inlet/outlet port are once taken over and these are inputted again within the predetermined period, these bills are discriminated again. It is because when bills are not discriminated as the true bills since the bills are not compared with the reference pattern used for discrimination in the discriminating section due to the operating condition of apparatus or conditions of bills, for example, bills are transferred obliquely or since bills are not in such a level as may be discriminated as the true bills due to breaks thereof, the bills may sometimes be discriminated as the true bills by discriminating these bills again. As a result of re-discrimination, if bills are not discriminated as the true bills, these bills are transferred again to the inlet/outlet port and the guidance for instructing a customer to take out the bills in the inlet/outlet port is displayed again. If the bills are not taken over even after this operation is repeated for the predetermined number of times the, transaction itself is interupted, all bills inputted are transferred to the inlet/outlet port for completing the transaction.
When bills are discriminated as the true bills as a result of re-discrimination, these are accommodated together with the bills which are discriminated previously as the true bills and accommodated in the temporary pooling section.
When bills are completely accommodated in the temporary pooling section the, amount of bills inputted is displayed on the display (not illustrated), urging the customer to recognize the amount of bills displayed. When the customer verifies the amount of bills, the customer notifies it by depressing a button (not illustrated).
Moreover, when a button (not illustrated) is depressed to notify the intermission of the transaction because the displayed amount is different from the actually inputted amount of bills or the actually inputted bills do not reach the amount of bills to be deposited, the bills in the temporary pooling section are transferred to the inlet/outlet port, the shutter is opened urging a customer to take over the bills, thereby completing the transaction.
When it is notified that the customer has recognized the amount of bills, the bills in the temporary pooling section are at once transferred to the inlet/outlet port and the bills are fed sheet by sheet from the inlet/outlet port and are then transferred again to the discriminating section. The discriminating section discriminates the denominations. On the basis of the discrimination result by the discrimination section, the bills of the denominations corresponding to each accommodation cabinet are stored, completing the operations.
This apparatus has a removable teller's safe which is used for charging or collecting bills.
That is, when dispensation such as expensing transaction is executed continuously and amount of bills in the accommodation cabinet is reduced exceeding the predetermined amount, the bills are fed from the teller's safe in which bills are accommodated previously and then transferred to the discriminating section through the transfer route having the transfer roller or transfer belt (not illustrated). The discriminating section discriminates denominations. On the basis of the result of discrimination by the discriminating section, bills can be charged by accommodating the bills in each accommodation cabinet. This charging operation is carried out until the amount of bills in each accommodation cabinet has reached the predetermined amount and when the amount of bills reaches the predetermined amount, the charging operation is suspended. A bill which is a true bill but is damaged in such a degree as cannot be used actually is found in the discriminating section during the charging operation and a bill which cannot be discriminated as true bill due to two sheets of bill are transferred are accommodated in the reject section of the teller's safe.
In addition, when a deposit is continued until the accommodation cabinet is filled with bills, the bills in the accommodation cabinet are fed by the feeding mechanism and are then transferred into the teller's safe through the discriminating section. This collecting operation is executed until the bills in each accommodation cabinet reach the predetermined amount.
Moreover, the bills must be accommodated in the accommodation cabinet in order to start the operations of the apparatus. In this case, a person in charge of a bank issues an instruction for initialization of the apparatus from an operating panel (not illustrated) and also loads the teller's safe in which bills are accommodated. Thereby, the bills are fed from the teller's safe and are then accommodated in each teller's safe through the transfer route and the discriminating section. Therefore, when the predeterminaed amount of bills are accommodated in each accommodation cabinet, the initializing operation is terminated, making ready the apparatus for transaction.
When operation of the apparatus stops and the bills in each accommodation cabinet must be collected, a person in charge issues an instruction for collection of bills from the operation panel (not illustrated). Thereby, the bills accommodated in each accommodation cabinet are collected into the teller's safe through the feeding mechanism, transfer route and discriminating section. In this case, as the teller's safe, a vacant safe is preferably loaded. When the bills in each accommodation cabinet are collected, the collecting operation is terminated. Upon termination of collecting operation, a person in charge removes the teller's safe and carries it back to the premises of bank. The bills in the apparatus can be inspected by counting the amount of bills within the teller's safe.
In such apparatus of the related art, the temporary pooling section is provided as the preceding stage of the inlet/outlet port. When bills are deposited, the bills fed from the inlet/outlet port are discriminated and then accommodated in the temporary pooling section. After the bills are transferred again to the inlet/outlet port, the bills are accommodated in each accommodation cabinet.
Moreover, at the time of expensing transaction, the bills are fed from each accommodation cabinet and are then accommodated in the temporary pooling section. Thereafter, the bills are transferred to the inlet/outlet port and then dispensed to a customer.
The temporary pooling section is provided, as explained above, to solve the problems at the time of inputting the bills, but this section also stores temporarily the bills fed from the accommodataion cabinet at the time of outputting the bills. It is because the transfer route for transferring the bills in the accommodation cabinet to the inlet/outlet port at the time of outputting the bills and the transfer route for returning the bills inputted to the inlet/outlet port are used in common in view of preventing complication and enlargement of the transfer route.
Therefore, at the time of both deposit and dispensation of bills, the bills are once stored in the temporary pooling section and are then tansferred to the inlet/outlet port. Thereby, the number of times of bill feeding is increased, often resulting in a jam or damage of bills.
At the time of transaction which requires input of bills such as the deposit transaction, the bills which are once discriminated are stored in the temporary pooling section and the bills are fed sheet by sheet, when a customer has recognized the transaction, after the bills are transferred again to the inlet/outlet port and are accommodated in each accommodation cabinet, consuming a longer transaction time.
If a fault occurs in the accommodation cabinet accommodating bills or in a feeding mechanism for feeding the bills from the accommodation cabinet, the deposit and dispensation transactions are disabled when a fault occurs and maintenance must be done by suspending the operations of apparatus.
When it is requested to provide two teller's safes to increase the amount of bills in the apparatus in view of preventing as much as possible the stoppage of operation because all bills accommodated in the apparatus are dispensed, if the apparatus is maintained imperfectly, it becomes a cause of a fault since a locking of the forward teller's safe can be confirmed easily but the backward (or rear) teller's safe cannot be confirmed visually.
Moreover, it is also considered to provide the temporary pooling section in the accommodation cabinet for accommodating the bills in order to realize high speed processing for the deposit transaction, but it is impossible to manipulate the bills of the denominations other than that corresponding to the accommodation cabinet only by providing the temporary pooling section.
In case the teller's safe accommodating the bills is loaded, the bills accommodated within the teller's safe is unclear and therefore the bills in the teller's safe must be confirmed.
In this case, it is also possible that the bills in the teller's safe are disciminated using the discriminating section in the apparatus and the bills in the teller's safe are confirmed on the basis of the discrimination result. However, if a bill which cannot be discriminated as the true bill as the result of discrimination is found, this bill is accommodated in the reject section in the teller's safe.
Since the apparatus is not provided with the accommodating section for accommodating the bills not discriminated, the bills not discriminated among those fed from the accommodation cabinet are also accommodated inevitably in the reject section within the teller's safe.
That is, both bills in the apparatus and teller's safe are accommodated in the reject section of the teller's safe and these bills cannot be distinguished clearly. Therefore, the bills loaded in the teller's safe cannot be confirmed.
Moreover, if a bill which is not discriminated as the true bill is rejected as the bill not used again, inspite a bill not discriminated as the true bill may probably be discriminated as the true bill through rediscrimination by discriminating the bills fed from the teller's safe or accommodation cabinet in the discriminating section, the application efficiency of bills is bad.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to solve the various problems explained above and to provide an apparatus which generates fewer faults and realizes a long-term operation without any pause, if a fault is generated, and also a high speed operation.